Early Episode III review from Kevin Smith

[Weltall]

But Palpatine's motives (to put it simply): wanting to bring a galaxy back to its former glory and remove the incompetence that has controlled it for thousands of years, has many parallels to Hitler's. There is more to it than that, but I don't want to spoil Episode III for you. I suggest you wait until you see that movie, and if you are still unsatisfied then there is no hope for you.

Give me a direct example from the movies where Palpatine states that he wishes to return the galaxy to a former glory. I know that the Republic is decaying from the inside because of poor leadership, and Palpatine remarks upon this, but nothing he does speaks to me that he is really interested in fixing the system. He wishes to replace it with his own, one born from a corrupt individual. Palpatine does not want the system to improve, for that matter, he doesn't care if it changes one bit. The only thing he wants is to be in control of the system, good, bad or ugly, and that the Empire is riddled with corruption and decay is proof enough of that. The Empire is much more iron-fisted in its methods than the Republic, but it is no more efficient or stable (after all, a small rebel force is able to knock the Empire flat on its ass in a matter of only a few years), and right up to the end, Palpatine sees no wrong in what he does, neither in the moral sense, nor in the application sense. He's such a genius that his protege tosses his wrinkled old ass into a reactor core and his empire is brought down with the help of an army of teddy bears.

Palpatine doesn't want order and stability, and he never gets it. What he does want is power, and that's what he gets. He may use the guise of order and stability as bait to convince others, but the viewer cannot be fooled unless he allows himself to be.

In the OT, you learn all that you need to know about Palpatine for those movies. Nothing more is needed; simply adding more backstory to a character does not constitute great storytelling. You don't just give every person an elaborate background. But your ridiculous simplification of Palpatine does little to help your case.

Jesus, I know not every character deserves his own chapter of history. But Palpatine isn't just any character, he is the single most driving force behind the existence of Star Wars! Everything that takes place happens because of what Palpatine does! Without Palps, we wouldn't have Darth Vader, or the slaughter of the Jedi, or the Empire, or the force which rebels against it. Without Palpatine, nothing would have changed. Palpatine is the master manipulator, the puppeteer who controls every major event of the entire play. He is, by far, the single most influential and important catalyst of the entire series. Every other character in the series is, in the end, a pawn in a game he created and controls. He deserves more backstory than ANYONE, and that he has so little to show in that category is a travesty. Palpatine COULD be such an incredibly deep character even without the whole tragic past angle, yet Lucas, for whatever reason, through five movies so far given us no character development whatsover on this character. The only change Palpatine goes through is that he starts out as the Evil Chancellor who controls things from behind the scenes, to the Evil Emperor who controls things from center stage. That is not character development, just inevitable progression. It is lazy.

I won't say Ep. III won't answer a lot of my questions. It just may satisfy me. But after five episodes of nothing, you can't blame me for being skeptical... well, most people can't. You'll have no trouble though, I know :)